Integrated circuit devices have numerous applications in industry. In many of these applications, it is necessary that they be accurate to a known degree. This necessitates the testing of each device before it enters the marketplace.
Various types of integrated circuit testers have been developed. Typically, these testers perform their function at a high rate of speed. Therefore, it is necessary to convey the device for testing to and from a test site interfacing with the tester also at a high rate of speed.
These testers typically test the devices one at a time. Therefore, it is important that the devices be delivered to the test site individually. In the prior art, methods of singulation (that is, methods of isolating a single device from many of such devices) have been developed for performance by integrated circuit handlers which incorporate a single test site and cycle devices to be tested thereto.
The speed at which integrated circuits can be tested has, heretofore, been dependent upon the speed at which the devices can be delivered to the test site for testing. As previously indicated, prior art structures typically included only a single test site.
An apparatus that can test more than one integrated circuit device per singulation apparatus, but without the complexity of multiple testers and test feeders, would be a significant advancement in the art. Multiple test sites fed by each singulator would enable processing of integrated circuits more quickly than with one test site, and incorporating a single drive mechanism for feeding the integrated circuits into plural test sites would reduce the complexity of the apparatus and, commensurately, reduce the potential of malfunction.
Use of various types of shuttles is common in the prior art. One shuttle device typically requires means for mounting the shuttle for pivoting between an orientation in which it receives an integrated circuit device and one in which it deposits the device into a chute leading to a test site. Such a shuttle is characterized as a "drop shuttle". Typically, such a shuttle pivots to define a plane, the chute being immediately below the station at which the shuttle receives the device. This would be true, of course, where there is a single test site. Multiple test site handlers would necessarily require shuttles of this type to be moved laterally.
The present invention functions to overcome the problems of the prior art and addresses the desirable features dictated by the prior art. It is an improved shuttle apparatus for use in handling integrated circuit devices at high speeds.